It’s Crazy How Fast These Frozen Desserts Caught On

Ice cream is never boring, even when we’re scooping vanilla — the world’s most popular flavor by a landslide. But we’ve swirled wayyy past vanilla with our crazy concoctions of America’s favorite frozen dessert. From the jet-black activated charcoal ice cream at Prohibition Creamery in Austin, Texas, to the cornbread and beer ice creams of OddFellows in NYC, we like it weird. We see these Instagram sensations like Black Tap‘s over-the-top milkshakes that have cakes, cookies, and candies towering on top of the glass and then all those health-oriented “nice” creams substituting cream and sugar for bananas, coconut cream, almond milk, and anything other than dairy. We love to lap up every cool treat trend along the way.

The earliest ice cream we have on record hails from 4th Century B.C., according to ThoughtCo., but it was White House chef Augustus Jackson who popularized the creamy, cold, sweet stuff in the United States in 1832. Jackson figured out how to package ice cream in tin cans to distribute to African-American-owned ice cream parlors. He was dubbed the Father of Ice Cream, even though he didn’t invent it or patent his process or flavors.

Take snow cones: In 1919, Samuel “King Sammie” Bert of East Dallas began selling the icy treats at the State Fair of Texas, according to the History Channel. The next year, he patented his ice crusher machine, and by the early 1950s, he was selling an estimated 1 million snow cones a year at his stand.

Lemon Tree Snippets

A slight variation to the snow cone, shaved ice thrives especially in Hawaii, and former Pres. Barack Obama loves it. But unlike the crushed ice of snow cones, shaved ice is fluffier and holds more syrup. That started during the Industrial Revolution about 1845, when wagons carried ice from New York to the South, distributing ice shavings to kids in Baltimore, Maryland, where they added syrup. In New Orleans, Louisiana, Hansen’s Sno-Bliz was the first to operate an electric ice-shaving machine when it opened in 1939, selling the treats for 2 cents each. Two cents: Can you imagine?!

Popsicles came about in the early 1900s (in 1925 according to the Great American Ice Cream Book and 1905 according to Encyclopedia of Food and Drink) when Frank Epperson left a glass of lemonade with a spoon or stick in it on a windowsill on a cold New Jersey day.

More variations in ice cream came in 1907, when a student created the banana split at a Pennsylvania soda shop; in 1925, when Howard Johnson’s introduced more butterfat into ice cream plus 28 flavors, according to The Lowell Sun; in 1940, when Dairy Queen dished out 1,600 servings of new soft-serve ice cream in two hours; and in 1945, when Baskin-Robbins opened to offer 31 flavors and become the world’s largest chain of ice cream specialty stores today.

Then fro-yo happened.

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We can thank (or blame?) TCBY for starting the frozen yogurt craze in 1981. An acronym for The Country’s Best Yogurt, the chain began in Arkansas, capitalizing on the emerging health craze with its low-fat frozen dessert alternative to ice cream. Of course, we know today that it has a lot of sugar, which is the enemy of modern health watchers. But self-service frozen yogurt shops are still everywhere and popular.

In the 1990s, we started borrowing from other cultures for our next frozen dessert fix, specifically Asian cultures. Traditional Japanese mochi cakes morphed into mochi ice cream after much experimentation by a couple in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles, California, forming their Mikawaya mochi ice cream company in the U.S. in 1993. Mango, green tea, and cookies-n-cream flavors of ice cream are wrapped in balls of fluffy, chewy, sweet rice dough. Trader Joe’s carries the latest version, My/Mo. It’s a thing.

My/Mo Mochi Ice Cream

Another favorite for Instagram videos and photos: Thai rolled ice cream, those quarter-sized rolls of ice cream squeezed into a cup vertically with all sorts of toppings. Watching it being made is half the fun. The ice cream made fresh to order. After you make your choice (like wild berry lavender or virgin mojito at Blossom in Brooklyn, New York), employees pour flavored milk liquid onto a round metal plate that’s kept so cold it’s sometimes below 0 degrees Fahrenheit. They spread the liquid around the pizza-shaped platter and cut it into strips as it freezes and hardens, rolling it with the spatula. It’s super fun to watch.

Amy Sowder

We’re keeping our eyes open for the next trend in frozen desserts, from spaghetti ice cream to whatever wackiness ensues. In the meantime, try a few of our favorites at home.

1. Halo-Halo Ice Pops

Chowhound

These Filipino ice pops have a lot going on, but we pared it down and made it flexible for you. You do want uber, or purple yams, as well as sugar, coconut milk, cream, and whole milk. Then the rest is up to you, from mango to whole boiled corn. Yep, corn. Get our Halo-Halo Ice Pops recipe.

2. Strawberry Shortcake Milkshake

Chowhound

Take some of your favorite components of the cake, and pour it into a glass and slurp it. Doll with the red hair that smells like strawberry candy not required. (What, you weren’t a little girl in the ’80s?) Get our Strawberry Shortcake Milkshake recipe.

This is like raspberry sorbet with a kick. Lambic is a Belgium wheat beer infused with either berries or cherries. Think of it as an adult dessert. Get our Frozen Lambic Ice recipe.

5. Mochi Ice Cream

This version requires buying two items from an Asian grocery store: mochi and red bean ice cream. Then you stuff the latter into the former. But you can make your own ice cream, if you use our Red Bean Ice Cream recipe before you go for our Mochi Ice Cream recipe.

Amy Sowder is a writer and editor based in NYC, covering food and wellness in publications such as Bon Appétit, Women's Health, Eat This, Not That!, Upworthy/GOOD, Brooklyn Magazine, and Westchester Magazine. She loves to run races, but her favorite finish lines are gelato shops. Learn more at AmySowder.com.